Page 7 of The Best Ex of My Life

‘How many men do you reckon you’ve been out with?’ I ask them when the waitress has taken our order for coffee and paninis.

‘What, my whole life?’ Teddy asks.

‘Yeah, how many?’

She tries to work it out, but gives in a few seconds later, like the sum is too hard.

‘I don’t know. A lot.’

‘Karina?’

‘Let me think. I probably go out with six or seven men a year, on average, and I’ve been dating pretty much constantly since I was sixteen, so that’s … Jesus.’

‘Exactly. I’ve got to forty-eight,’ I tell them. ‘And I’m sure I’m missing a few. Between us there’s an unthinkable number of men we’ve been out with. In my case, I’d rather permanently remove most of them from my consciousness, but in that huge pile of exes there’s got to be some that are half decent. Remember what we were talking about on Saturday night, about the idea of dating each other’s good exes? I think we should seriously consider it.’

‘Not this old chestnut again,’ Teddy says, smiling at me.

‘Yes, this again,’ I press on. ‘The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve become convinced it’s a brilliant idea. We’ve been spending all this time meeting strangers, hoping that we’ll get lucky, when between us we’ve got a collection of men who we’ve already checked out. There’s no one I would trust more to be a good judge of character than the two of you. There must be some men you’ve dated, Teddy, who it hasn’t worked out with but who could be great for either me or Karina.’

Teddy thinks about it for all of three seconds before shaking her head.

‘See, I’m not sure there are.’

‘Yes, there are,’ Karina jumps in to contradict her. ‘How about Finlay?’

I beam at her in gratitude for getting on board. ‘Yes! Finlay was great,’ I agree. ‘You always told us how much he made you laugh.’

‘He did. He was hilarious, right until the moment I found him in bed with his flatmate.’

‘Oh yeah. Definitely not Finlay,’ Karina says.

‘I mean I guess there’s Adam, if you want him. He was very …’ Teddy searches for the right word. ‘Mature.’

Karina barks out a laugh. ‘Adam? The guy you brought to Lizzie’s birthday meal? The one who spent half an hour on his phone calculating how much he owed and paid in cash? I can still remember him rolling coins down the table at me.’

‘Maybe not Adam either,’ Teddy says. ‘Although there is something to be said about being with someone so frugal. He always said he’d have the last laugh when he was sitting in his static caravan in Wales at sixty, and the rest of us were still slaving away.’

‘OK, maybe we need a bit more time to think about who we can set each other up with,’ I concede, ‘but it’s still a great idea, and most importantly, it will be fun and will save me from losing my willpower and going back online. I swear I can’t do it anymore.’

Teddy puts her hand on top of mine in sympathy.

‘I suppose it wouldn’t be too bad if you were to set me up with one of your exes, Kar,’ she says. ‘I always did like the sound of the one who wrote poems for you.’

‘Ah, Eddie,’ Karina says, wistfully. ‘Yeah, Eddie was great. You can’t help but be impressed with a man who can rhyme “red-hot lover” with “will be a great mother”. Shame he had that weird stale-popcorn smell about him after he was in the rain.’

I smother a laugh. ‘OK, the good ones might not be exactly springing to mind right now, but among the Eddies and the Finlays and the Adams, there are definitely people we’ve dated who we’ve found to be nice and normal, even if they aren’t right for us. Before you arrived at Kar’s on Saturday, Teddy, we were saying there should be a test that men have to take to find out what they are really like before you date them. Well, this is it. There’s no better test to find out what someone is really like than having your best friend date them before you do. So, what do you say? How about an ex-swap?’

Teddy and Karina turn to look at each other, and I catch the almost imperceptible nods they exchange.

‘Is that a yes? Are you in?’

‘We’re in,’ Teddy says, and I let out a squeal before throwing my arms around them both.

Chapter 4

That whole thing about there being tons of decent men in our dating histories?

While it is definitely true for Karina and possibly true for Teddy, it turns out it’s very much not true for me.